SILVER GLEN SPRINGS · MAY · NOAA 1991-2020 NORMALS
The spring runs at one temperature all year, and May is the month the air finally catches up with it. The official normals put a May afternoon at 87.4°F, with 3.08 inches of rain spread across the whole month. Four weeks later the sky opens: June averages 7.56 inches. Anyone who wants a dry weekend in the water should be booking May rather than June.
What moves between April and June is the air above the vent, not the vent: 81.5°F afternoons in April, 87.4°F in May, 90.3°F in June, with daylight stretching to 8:13 p.m. by mid-month. Those numbers decide when you swim, what goes in the car, and whether the afternoon sends you back to the parking lot early.
MAY AT A GLANCE · SILVER GLEN SPRINGS
May gives you summer air over a dry-season rain total: 87.4°F afternoons, 3.08 inches across 4.5 wet days, and light that lasts until 8:13 p.m.
NOAA 1991-2020 NORMALS · GAINESVILLE RGNL AP, 48 MILES AWAY · AIR, NOT WATER
Go for: warm afternoons over a dry-month rain total, long evenings, and a spring that swims the same in May as it does in December.
Think twice before: counting on a published fee or opening hour from us. We could not read either one, so call ahead the week you travel.
Air normals: NOAA NCEI, station USW00012816 · Discharge: USGS NWIS 02236160 · Sun times: sunrise-sunset.org · full sources at the end
On this page
- May weather at Silver Glen Springs87.4°F afternoons and 4.5 wet days
- How warm May gets, dawn to mid-afternoon62.6°F at sunrise, 87.4°F by two
- Crowds, prices and weekend parkingWhat we verified, and what we could not
- Things to do in MayThe vent at 87 cubic feet a second
- A two-day plan built around the lightSunrise 6:32 a.m., sunset 8:13 p.m.
- May vs April and June3.08 inches against June’s 7.56
- Is May a good month to go?Yes, if you swim before noon
Every air figure here comes from one real thermometer, at Gainesville Regional Airport, roughly 48 miles from the spring. The discharge figure comes from a gauge at the vent itself. The two are not the same kind of measurement, and the difference matters once you are standing in the parking lot.
Silver Glen Springs weather in May: average highs, lows and rain days
| Silver Glen Springs, May | Normal, 1991-2020 |
|---|---|
| Average high | 87.4°F |
| Average low | 62.6°F |
| Precipitation | 3.08 in |
| Days with 0.10 in or more | 4.5 |
| Days with 1 in or more | 1.0 |
| Daylight on May 15 | 13 h 40 min |
These are NOAA NCEI monthly normals for 1991-2020, read from station USW00012816 at Gainesville Regional Airport, about 48 miles from the water. A station record, not a reanalysis grid cell, and not a reading taken at the swimming area. May there averages 87.4°F by day, 62.6°F at night and 3.08 inches of rain. Take them as the air over that stretch of north-central Florida, then expect the forest canopy to knock a few degrees off the walk in.
Measurable rain, meaning at least 0.10 inch, falls on 4.5 days in an average May. Call it one day in seven, with 26 days recording nothing worth an umbrella. May is also the first month of Florida’s wet season, so what arrives tends to arrive late in the day rather than at breakfast. You lose an hour under a shelter, not a weekend, and the spring is unaffected either way.
Nights average 62.6°F while afternoons sit at 87.4°F, and wet skin at six in the morning feels colder than the number reads. Pack accordingly: a long-sleeve layer and a dry towel for the first hour, sun cover for the rest of the day, and more drinking water than a 90-minute drive seems to justify. Anything you want to keep dry travels in a bag, because the 1-in-7 rain day gives no notice.
On May 15 there are 13 hours 40 minutes between sunrise and sunset. The sun comes up at 6:32 a.m. Eastern and goes down at 8:13 p.m., which leaves a full evening after the hottest part of the afternoon has passed. That late light is the practical gift of the month: a seven o’clock swim still ends with a drive out in daylight.
How warm is Silver Glen Springs in May?
The answer depends on the hour. Average high 87.4°F, average low 62.6°F, a spread of 24.8 degrees inside a single day, climbed through roughly eight hours of rising sun. Our sources carry no water temperature for the spring, so we give no figure for the swim itself. They do establish the important part: the vent has no season, and only the air around it moves with the calendar.
In practice, that means two different outfits. Before nine you want sleeves, closed shoes for the walk and a towel within reach, because 62.6°F plus a breeze plus wet skin is a genuine chill. By two in the afternoon the same clothes are unbearable and the question becomes shade: a hat, a shirt you can soak, and a cooler you do not leave baking in a car at 87.4°F.
Freezing is off the table. The May low of 62.6°F sits more than thirty degrees above the freeze line, and we found no count of freezing nights for May in the normals we read. Cold in May is a comfort problem at dawn, never a safety one, and it disappears by nine o’clock.
How busy is Silver Glen Springs in May? Crowds, prices and weekend parking
May sits on the hinge of the Florida calendar, the first month on the far side of the November-to-April dry run. We found no occupancy series and no monthly room rates for this part of north-central Florida, so we crown no month cheap and no month expensive. What we can date is the sky: 3.08 inches in May against 7.56 in June, and 4.5 wet days against 11.0.
The constraint on a May trip is the Saturday, not the month. Lock the bed as soon as a weekend date is fixed, and treat the drive as part of the plan rather than an afterthought: our where-to-stay guide covers the bases within range and getting around Florida covers the car and the tolls. We could not verify a parking capacity at the spring, and a warm May Saturday is exactly when a lot would fill, so aim to arrive at opening rather than at noon.
We could not verify a lodging-tax rate for the county, so we give no percentage. Our trip-cost guide handles the budget layer for the state. We also came away with no entrance fee and no opening hour for Silver Glen Springs: floridastateparks.org returned a 403 to our automated reads on September 11, 2026, and the state’s manatee page renders only inside a browser.
If one budget line deserves raising in May, it is the distance from the bed to the water. Sleeping within half an hour turns a 6:32 a.m. sunrise into an easy start, and the early start is the whole difference between a 62.6°F morning at the spring and an 87.4°F afternoon spent looking for a space.
Things to do in Silver Glen Springs in May
May is the one month of the three that pairs summer air with dry-season rain: 87.4°F afternoons over 3.08 inches, where June offers 90.3°F over 7.56. Swimming, paddling and a long picnic all fit inside the same afternoon, and a plan made at breakfast usually survives until dinner. April can hand you a beautiful day, but its 55.5°F nights make a dawn swim a dare rather than a pleasure.
The spring run is the anchor. The USGS gauge at station 02236160 measured 87 cubic feet per second leaving the vent when we read it on September 11, 2026, a single instantaneous reading rather than a monthly mean. That volume is why the water is clear: it is replaced faster than it can cloud. Florida law reserves the label Outstanding Florida Springs for every historic first-magnitude spring the Florida Geological Survey identifies, plus six more named by hand in statute 373.802(5).
The spring does not read the calendar, so the season is entirely in the contrast. In May the walk from the car is the hot part and the water is the relief. By June that same walk comes with 90.3°F air and rain on 11 days a month, and drying off becomes a negotiation with humidity. Manatees are a winter subject on another coast, and our manatee guide handles Crystal River.
We could not verify an entrance fee, a free day or an opening hour here, so we cannot tell you what costs nothing at the gate. Daylight, at least, is free and generous: 13 hours 40 minutes on May 15, with the last of it landing at 8:13 p.m. For the wider state menu, our things-to-do guide ranks the rest.
Silver Glen Springs in May: a two-day itinerary
Day one starts before the heat does. Sunrise is 6:32 a.m., so leave with enough margin to be at the water by seven, when the air is still near its 62.6°F overnight low. Swim first, eat at nine, and be under canopy by noon as the thermometer climbs toward 87.4°F. Give the middle of the day to a shaded bench or the drive to lunch, then take a second swim at six and dry off in the last hour of light.
Day two repeats the morning and spends the afternoon somewhere with a roof. If the sky turns, remember the shape of May rain: 4.5 measurable days across the month, generally arriving late rather than at breakfast. Move the swim earlier, keep the drive flexible after three, and treat a shower as an hour lost. Our 7-day Florida itinerary shows how the spring fits into a longer loop.
Silver Glen Springs in May vs April and June
| Normal, 1991-2020 | April | May | June |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average high | 81.5°F | 87.4°F | 90.3°F |
| Average low | 55.5°F | 62.6°F | 69.5°F |
| Precipitation | 2.74 in | 3.08 in | 7.56 in |
| Days with 0.10 in or more | 3.8 | 4.5 | 11.0 |
Going from April to May adds 5.9°F to the afternoon and 7.1°F to the night for a third of an inch more rain. Going from May to June adds only 2.9°F by day, but 4.48 inches of rain and six and a half more wet days, 11.0 against 4.5. The spring reads the same in all three months, so the entire comparison is a matter of air and sky.
Shift back four weeks and you gain cooler afternoons at 81.5°F and slightly drier days, then pay for it at dawn with 55.5°F nights that make the first swim an act of will. Our April page makes that case in detail. Shift forward four weeks and you gain warm nights at 69.5°F, then lose most of your afternoons to rain.
Is May a good time to visit Silver Glen Springs?
For a swimming trip, yes, and comfortably so. Anyone who wants a warm afternoon, a long evening and a reasonable chance of a dry Saturday is well served by 87.4°F and 3.08 inches. The people who should hesitate are those who dislike heat while walking, travel with a group that cannot start early, or need published hours and a confirmed fee before leaving home, since we could not obtain either.
If that describes your trip, April is the month to take instead: 81.5°F afternoons, 2.74 inches of rain and 3.8 wet days, with the cold end of the day confined to the hour after sunrise. The trade is real, because those April nights bottom out at 55.5°F and the water will feel warmer than the air before eight o’clock.
May is the only month of the three that puts full summer afternoons over a dry-season rain total, and that combination does not come back until the following spring.
The last word
Choose May over June if a dry weekend matters more to you than a warm night, and build both days around the 6:32 a.m. sunrise rather than around lunch. One figure worth carrying: an average May records a full day with an inch or more of rain, which is a soaking rather than a shower, so keep one morning loose in case it lands on yours. Call the park line before you drive to confirm the hours and gate price.
Sources & data for this guide
- May normals: 87.4°F high, 62.6°F low, 3.08 in, 4.5 days at 0.10 in, 1.0 day at 1 in · NOAA NCEI monthly normals 1991-2020, station USW00012816, Gainesville Rgnl AP, FL · checked Sep 24, 2026
- April and June normals used in the comparison table · same NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 series · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Station distance: the thermometer sits about 78 km (roughly 48 miles) from the spring, and measures air, not spring water · NOAA NCEI station metadata · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Daylight of 13 h 40 min and sun times of 6:32 a.m. / 8:13 p.m. Eastern on May 15, converted from 10:32 and 00:13 UTC · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Discharge of 87 cubic feet per second, an instantaneous reading · USGS National Water Information System, station 02236160 · read Sep 11, 2026
- Outstanding Florida Springs definition, first-magnitude springs plus six named springs · Florida Statutes 373.802(5) · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Not verified: entrance fee, opening hours, parking capacity and any manatee count. floridastateparks.org returned 403 to automated reads and the FWC manatee page renders client-side · Sep 11, 2026
- Packing, timing and itinerary advice is editorial; fees and hours change · call the operator before you drive.